[Blog Post #4-2. 2nd Interview by An Minsook]

[Blog Post #4-2. 2nd Interview by An Minsook]

Wooin Heo - Interviewed by Minsook

Our second interviewee is Wooing who is a super fan of SHINee (a Korean idol singer group). She is a university student studying Business Administration in SNU. This interview was conducted for 32 minutes and she showed her love to SHINee with full heart.

▣ Falling in love with SHINee

 Heo has been a super fan of SHINee for seven years. She said that she fell in love with SHINee as a super fan when she was in high school. She confessed that she began to like SHINee and supported them as a fan as a outlet of her stress from suppressive educational atmosphere. As a normal Korean high school student, she also had to attend additional tutoring after school and studying time Yaja, having no time to cultivate her own hobby or enjoying her leisure time.

 Heo mentioned that the style of the songs from SHINee is really her style - it’s another main reason why she fell in love with them. Since she is an amateur dancer, SHINee’s excellent and magnificent dancing style rather than their songs has been attractive to her and even made her to start dancing.

▣ Her passion as a super fan & feelings towards rival group

 Heo even has visited faraway city Daegu to just attend a tiny ‘high-five’ meeting with SHINee. In that meeting, they didn’t give their autographs or have small talk with fans, but just slapped high-fives for a second for each fan. That was all. But she made it, because she is a big fan of them. She also spends for about 50,000 won per a month to buy albums or support SHINee as a fan, besides from having joined the official fan club ‘SHINee World’. She says that fan club members join the fan club to make their idol feel proud of the scale and the numbers of their fan.

 Heo said that she actually thinks there’s no rival for SHINee. People often set 2PM as a rival group of SHINee, but she, to be frank, doesn’t consider 2PM as her idol’s rival because each of the groups is focusing on different sector - for SHINee, they have different dancing and music style which can be described as ‘cute’ while 2PM has more masculine style, doing some performances like ripping off their shirts on stage and so on. She put an accent on that SHINee is totally different to be compared with ‘so-called rival’ 2PM.

▣ The hardest time as a super fan

 When there were scandals between SHINee members and other female celebrities, Heo said that those times were the hardest time as a super fan of SHINee. Those times even made her feel to quit as a fan, but she survive. She said that many fans quit being a fan when scandal happens because fans, themselves are the people who support SHINee, buying albums and attend fan meetings. Even Heo understands that that kind of love affair can happen between grown-up idols but she wants them to keep it secret, not making it open to the fans to be disappointed.

▣ Several stereotypes and her answers

• “You are ‘otaku’ about idols - being crazy about them!”

→ “We are doing our everyday stuff. We are not crazy about SHINee 24/7.”

• “You guys are just focusing on idols’ life.”

→ “We also go to school, do work, make money as normal people.” (Only extreme fans like Sasaeng fan do such things - and it’s a crime)

• “You are too old to be a (super) fan of idols.”

→ (She didn’t explained about this stereotype clearly, but implicitly, she seemed like she doesn’t care about the age to be a fan of an idol.)

▣ The biggest changes that brought to your life

 Even though there were hard times like the scandal of Onyu, SHINee always inspires her all the time. Watching their videos instills energy and brings inspiration to her. She mentioned that “SHINee makes me be more passionate, enthusiastic person about who I am and what I am doing.”